Chair rails have a history of being decorative as well as functional. Originally, chair rails were running lengths of wood that ran along a wall at the same height as the back of a chair. The chair rail, typically a couple of inches thick, functioned to protect the wall from damage caused by a chair hitting against the wall. As time progressed, decorative features were added to chair rails.
Today, chair rails are often used principally to provide a visual break in a room in order to impart decorative features. In some cases, chair rails have a groove along a back, bottom edge for mating with a panel, or wainscot. A wainscot comprises a panel that extends below a chair rail. In some cases, relatively thick panels having recesses therein are used. In other cases, tongue-and-groove boards join together to provide a decorative panel. In yet other cases, a relatively thin glass or board panel is used. In even other cases, a relatively thick, carved panel is used. However, it is necessary to first choose a panel in order to determine the thickness, and to then match a chair rail that has a properly sized groove along the bottom edge sized to overlap a given thickness of the chosen panel. Accordingly, distributors, vendors, and store owners are required to stock chair rails having multiple thickness grooves in order to provide customers with chair rails that can accept multiple wainscots having diverse thicknesses. Accordingly, there exists a need to reduce the requirement for distributors and vendors to stock multiple, decorative chair rails in order to enable mating with multiple unique wainscots.